


victoria aut mors

by fallfromstars



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-06-11
Updated: 2012-06-11
Packaged: 2017-11-07 11:49:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/430836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallfromstars/pseuds/fallfromstars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Victory or death. [LokixOC!Sigyn, post-Avengers] *Edited on 6/12/2012.  Rating change!</p>
            </blockquote>





	victoria aut mors

**Author's Note:**

> This thing was a trial to write, and I’m so glad this part of it is done. I've conceived this thing as a three-part fic. Part II is going to be a mirror piece, in which this exact same chapter is told from Sigyn’s point of view rather than Loki’s. And then Part III will be an epilogue where we catch up after the events of Part I/II. (At least, that’s the plan anyway. Part of me wants to see if I can get this story to Ragnarok, but I don't want to promise that.) 
> 
> I’m not going to lie: I mostly wrote this because I desperately wanted to make a fic where Sigyn was not submissive or Loki’s victim, which is the vibe I got from her in the comic-verse. I wanted Loki to be dangerous, but I also wanted to assign Sigyn some much-needed agency, and this was how I planned to do it.
> 
> Set in the Marvel movieverse with some liberties taken with the Norse mythos, but I can definitely say this is post-Avengers. ANY constructive criticism, especially on Loki’s character and Norse mythology in particular, would be super A+. I'm probably going to come back to this, so don't be surprised if things change over time. Thank you in advance for reading! :)
> 
> *Edited 6/12/2012 to give the ending a little bit more of a kick. Also, sex.

** VICTORIA AUT MORS **

****

**** (victory or death) ** **

****

** ** by  _fallfromstars_ ** **

****

** ** June 2012 ** **

****

**  
**

**

**Part I**

_

**_Loki Laufeyson_**

_ **

 

 

 

****To be a king and wear a crown is a thing more glorious to them that see it than it is pleasant to them that bear it.** **

****—** **

****Elizabeth I****

 

 

Loki Laufeyson, who is still not comfortable with blue bleeding through his skin and red seeping through his eyes and clings to his Asgardian glamour, is by the looks of things defeated. He is in chains, mouth bound, twisted fingers in cuffs, and the ice in his once-brother’s eyes lets him know he should not expect a warm homecoming.

The rest of them, the ones who had avenged the earth, stand around him with equally cold eyes. He sees Agent Romanoff’s arm wrap itself protectively around Agent Barton’s hip, a warning that she will never let Loki hurt him again. He sees Captain Steve Rogers’ jawline clench in a way that reminds him of the way the All-Father must have looked after a war, a long, long time ago. He sees the self-righteous little smirk on Tony Stark’s face, a look that says  _I have won and you have lost_ , as if that is ever really the end of any story, as if a victory must not always be defended. Only Dr. Bruce Banner, the monster, is slightly uneasy, but Loki’s mouth is bound and so he says nothing.

And the three of them—Thor Odinson, Loki Laufeyson, and the Tesseract, beautiful and shimmering and unattainable, as so many women are—flicker into the Manhattan sky.

And are no more.

**  
**

****§** **

**  
**

 

His trial happens quickly; when it does, it is nothing short of a mockery.   
  
In Asgard there is only the All-Father’s justice, cold and calculating and held at a distance with disdain, and when Loki is brought before his once-father, Odin can see on him the stains of sins he intended to commit along with the real blood on his hands. Odin can see the Frost Giants who  _might_ have died in Jötunheimr, the Asgardians who  _might_ have had to twist their mouths around the words “Hail Loki! Loki King!”, and the Midgardians who  _might_ have burned at the hands of the Chitauri. And Odin can see the destruction and handful of lives lost on the Midgardian island of Manhattan, and Thor testifies to the destruction and terror himself, and the Asgardians in witness gasp in terror that a son of Odin would dare do such a thing.

(Loki cannot understand the darkness in Asgardian eyes when people say his name, cannot even bear to see bright Baldur lower his eyes in his presence, not when they do not know where he has come from or what he has seen, though he keeps his hands by his sides and flinches at the sight of the ice outside.)

Of course he is condemned for his crimes, both intended and committed, and as the great chamber empties, having seen Loki Odinson fall from grace, he catches  _her_ eye for the first time.

She is dark and quiet and dressed in white. He’s never seen her before, but she does not seem intimidated, and so she must be familiar with Asgard then; she must be one of the nation’s own. But when he meets her eyes, there is a twisting of her hands, and a smile that she tries to hide at the corner of her mouth before she turns away from him. He swears to himself when he gets out, he will figure out what that smile is for—and ensure that only he will ever see it again.

  


****

****§****

 

He does not expect to see her bring him his meal. At best, he thought he would have to wait years to see her again, and when he did escape he would see her slightly plumper, married with a child or two upon her hip.

But there she is, belonging to no one, as lovely as she was in court, though her arms are bare and unadorned, and she is dressed in a simple gray shift, and her dark hair falls down her back in one thick braid.

She peers at him curiously, as if she is the one who is behind the bars, as if she has more questions than he does.

“You’ve grown taller,” she says simply, as if that is the most important thing she has to say.

“I take it we’ve met before?” he asks, though he cannot place her face. Even robbed of his cape and his battle finery, unable to shimmer in green and gold, he asks her the way a prince asks questions, expectant of the answer that would best please him.

“We have, Loki Odinson,” she replies with a sort of shrug of her shoulders, as if being familiar with an Asgardian prince is no real honor. He bites his lip so he may stifle a laugh at the sound of the name that is no longer his. She draws a symbol in the air to make a temporary break in his bars, and he takes the mug of cider and the cold plate that must have come from the feast held in honor of Thor’s return.   
  
( _His_ , he thinks bitterly,  _not mine_ , though that thought is nowhere near new; he thinks that it must be nearly as old as he is.)

She inverses her symbol then, securing him once more, and turns on her heel, the braid bobbing up and down against her back.

“You never told me your name,” he says as politely as he can, catching her in his gaze, hoping to catch her with his words.

“I told you once. It isn’t my fault  _you_ forgot,” she replies idly, maddeningly, not even turning around. She isn’t even giving him a second thought as she ascends the golden stair, to freedom and light.

**§**

She starts going through the motions like clockwork, every so often, constant as the sun and the sea and the stars, always with a braid down her back, always in a simple shift, always there and then gone.  
  
At mealtimes she will descend the golden stair, only looking at Loki out of the corner of her eye. She will draw her symbol-key, leave a plate and a goblet, take the empty ones from his hands, and draw it again. She will turn on her heel, and she will say absolutely nothing.  
  
He tries to catch her hand, keep her close so he can study her face.   
  
But she is too fast, and withdraws quickly, and he has to catch his plate, which gives her enough time to elude him. He tries to reach through the bars to get ahold of her long long braid, or brush against her skin, or slip under the straps of her shift, but she is always too fast, and he doesn’t learn a thing about her, not for a long, long while

**§**

**  
**

One day, or night, or sometime in-between, he is roused from a dreamless sleep by the war-horns. The girl comes in shortly with a hastily prepared meal, though she is not entirely focused. Her braid is messier than usual, her shift tied a little more loosely; this may well be the first time she has heard the war-horns. For a moment he almost wants to shield her from it.  
  
“What news from the field?” he asks her as she waves her hand across the bars and hands him his meal.  
  
“Thor departs,” she says, and she is looking skyward, swayed off-balance by the horns even as she is drawing her symbol.  _Perfect._  “Word has reached Asgard that Thanos, Avatar of Death, seeks to enslave the people of Midgard.  Thor has joined his warrior brothers there to defend it.”  
  
After all this time, she has finally let down her guard, and he intends to make the most of it. He grips her wrists and holds her close, barely an inch away from his bars. She tries to pull her wrist from him.   
  
“Let me  _go_ ,” she says, and suddenly he remembers.   
  
He remembers a girl who once kept her hair free, a girl bound to Asgard alongside her father. And though she had been dressed in much more finery when she was younger, she had never been nearly as beautiful then as she is now.  
  
“ _Sigyn_?” He has to choke out the name; he can barely believe it. She averts her eyes and he knows he has the right of it. “Sigyn Freyrsdóttir?”  
  
“Well met,” she says stiffly, still focusing on the floor. A war-horn pierces the sky above them.  
  
“You did not need to hide yourself from me,” he starts, even as she twists beneath his grip. “I should have liked to know my only visitor had a familiar face.”  
  
“I had no other choice,” she says simply, and the ice and stiffness reverberate from her voice, and her words spin from her mouth like strands of silver. “Father says you are not the Loki we knew. He says that a true Odinson would never have brought war down upon Asgard, and then to the Midgardians.”  
  
 _No, but a_ Laufeyson  _certainly would_ , he thinks sourly, though it would be no fun to let her in on that little secret just yet.   
  
“Things have—changed since we were small,” he says offhandedly. He gives her body an appreciative glance, but instead of being flattered, she narrows her eyes at him. “You certainly have.” It is an understatement if there ever was one; she shines with all the best aspects of day and night in front of him, yet she seems all but blind to it.  
  
She looks at him with an emotion he cannot quite place, perhaps because he has tried for so long to rid himself of sentiment. It had been a weakness on the battlefield against his foster father and brother and those thrice-damned Avengers; facing her now, he realizes it could have been a strength.   
  
“I am promised to another,” she says, and even if she doesn’t sound happy about it, suddenly all he can think of is her belonging to someone else, a thought that sickens him for reasons he cannot place. “And even if I wasn’t, I am hardly worthy of an Asgardian prince.”  
  
“You aren’t—?” He doesn’t understand. He had always had memories of Freyr being a loyal second-in-command to Odin; the man had even guarded the kingdom once or twice while his foster father had fallen into sleep before either Thor or Loki had been of age. How would the daughter of such a man not be a worthy wife for a prince?  
  
She breaks free from his grip, and before he can recapture her, she waves her hand again and he is bound once more. She gives him a mocking curtsy. “By your leave, my  _prince_ ,” she says with a downward curl of her lips, and he only smiles.  
  
And so she leaves to ascend the golden stair, to sweep up after the cavalry and see her surely valiant fiance off to war, and for a moment he wants to follow her, to ask what has happened to her, but he looks down for a moment and then she is gone.  
  


**§**

**  
**

He does not see Sigyn for another long while. Another girl, whose face he does not recognize even after some thought, does not respond to his questions about either Sigyn or herself, and goes through the same motions to keep him fed.   
  
He tries to pry her open too, but she is even more stubborn than Sigyn, and after a while she learns to leave the plate and goblet without greeting or indication, her skin folded over her secrets like a shell.  
  
He has carved fifteen days out in his cell when Sigyn returns again with his supper, arguing with her replacement, whom she calls Linza. She is cut off by a door being slammed in her face. She is cursing underneath her breath as she descends the golden stair; when she comes in front of him, her face is flushed and her braid is messy.  
  
“You look  _radiant_ , Sigyn,” he says, deciding to pile on the charm thickly to throw her off-balance and get a few answers out of her. He’s also dropped the formality her father’s name affords her, saddling her with an unwanted compliment, and though he sees the steel in her eyes, he cannot let her go. “It was so cruel of you to leave me for so long.”  
  
“I was needed elsewhere,” she responds curtly, drawing her symbol-key in harsh lines. She is careful to watch him now, focusing on him with both of her eyes. He hopes she never stops.   
  
“On the front?” he asks, trying to be as relaxed as possible as he hands her his empty plate and goblet. She bites her lower lip.  
  
“…yes,” she admits finally, gripping the empty goblet too tightly in a pale hand as she draws his lock with another.  
  
“And?” he asks, eyebrows perking up.  
  
The goblet snaps in two in her hands. She curses and sweeps the pieces up together in her hands, and he notices a few teardrops hitting the stone floor.  
  
“…Theoric is  _dead_ ,” she sobs, and though her face falls, he cannot bring himself to feign sympathy, and simply smiles at her.  
  
“I am truly sorry for your loss,” he says in a way that is charming and polite, but insincere.  
  
She scowls and binds him behind the bars again before he can protest.  
  
“If my mourning displeases my prince,” she says with thinly veiled disdain, “I shall do so elsewhere.” She does not curtsy and does not ask for his leave, and ascends up the golden stair once more, only to find that the door is locked.  
  
He hides his smile behind a white palm; later, he must take care to make a lady of that serving-girl who left Sigyn here with him.  
  
She grumbles after her fifth attempt at opening the door. She looks almost embarrassed as she descends back down, tying at her shift as she does, playing with her braid, doing anything to avoid making eye contact with him. There is no doubt that her heart is with her slain fiancé on the battlefield, but he wants her with him, within this very moment.  
  
“…come here,” he says after he feels he has given her sufficient time to mourn for the man who would never leave Midgard. She looks at him with a glare that tells him that is the last thing she wants to do, but the oath her father made to his binds her too, and she walks towards him.  
  
“My prince,” she says stiffly.  
  
He perks an eyebrow.  
  
She sighs, but curtsies politely.   
  
He smiles.  _Much better._  
  
“Now…why don’t you answer my question?” he asks. “About why you are seemingly unworthy for an Asgardian prince?”  
  
She bites her lip. It breaks through her composure, her confidence; he thinks he doesn’t like it. “I don’t think—”  
  
“We have  _time_ , Sigyn,” he says, nodding up at the door. “The girl—Linza, was it? She will not come for you until tomorrow, when I must break my fast.”  
  
Her eyes widen slightly as she realizes that she will be alone with him until then. For a moment it looks as if she may run to hide from him, but he catches her hand through the bars. She is warm, warmer than anything he has touched in a long time, but she does not brace from the cold she must feel underneath his Asgardian glamour. It freezes her on the spot but she does not flinch, and she holds onto him as tightly as he holds onto her.   
  
She kneels while holding onto his hand, and looks up at him. Her eyes are green and blue and both at once, a sea of stars as the warmth of the sun leaves Asgard.  
  
“Please,” he insists. “I want to know what has happened to you.”  
  
She purses her lips, then begins to speak.  
  


**§**

  
Freyr had long been a trusted advisor to the All-Father; they had been of an age when the universe was young and Asgard, along with the other eight realms, was still being carved into the sky. They had fought many battles together, shared victories and mourned losses, and while Freyr had been a war hostage from Vanaheimr, it was a bond of friendship, not servitude, that bound their families together at first.

“But the All-Father grew proud,” she says with disdain, “and once, when I was very young, he entrusted a great amount of duties to my father while he slept. And though he did his best, Odin woke to find that my father had done everything  _wrong_.”

At the time, she confesses, Freyr had once thought Sigyn would be a worthy companion to Thor, “or to you, as it please your father,” she adds to Loki, and a slight color runs over her cheeks as she averts her eyes from him. 

Asgardian friends enjoyed tying their progeny together to strengthen the bond between them, but after her father’s so-called mistakes, Freyr was told outright that Sigyn would never be worthy of an Asgardian prince.

That she would never be queen.

They left court in shame and in exile, and Sigyn was told that it was very likely she would never see Asgard again. She had spent her entire childhood in the far reaches of the nine realms, growing and shifting from place to place, belonging to no one or nowhere, and he wants to tell her he understands.

In Vanaheimr, she says, she and her father had fallen on hard times. His health was declining and his Sight was growing weak, and when her own became strong enough, her father promised that she could serve in his stead and provide for the both of them, as he had for her when she was small. 

She had knelt before the All-Father and pledged herself to him and his kin, but Odin did not give her the position that her father had held. Determined to keep her father at the castle lest his health fail further, she  had accepted an agreement that made them menial servants, below even those who had once waited on them.

 

**§**

  
“And now you know,” she says softly, and despite divulging her secrets, her face is no lighter. “The biggest  _honor_ I can ever hope to have is the joy that comes from bringing you your bread. And—” Her breath catches in her throat. “—my father thought that—if Theoric and I had been wed—he would have given me honor as well—”

But her words ring false, and she cannot even wrap her lips around the lies she must learn to bear, and she trembles. She tries to withdraw from him, but he catches her fingers again in his.

When she looks back up at him, there are hateful tears in her eyes. “You—you can never tell anyone,” she says, and the steel is back in her voice, an edge she should not have. “My father  _needs_ to stay here; if he were exiled again—”

Loki nods his understanding, and she slumps in relief next to him. She brings his fingers to her lips for a kiss, but it is not the kind he hungers for; it is a dutiful one, a kiss that a vassal gives to her lord, and he wants more than anything to make things simpler again, as they had been when they were children.

“Thank you, my prince,” she says softly, and the devotion, the trust in her eyes nearly moves him. All his life he had wanted one person—just one—to look at him and see a prince, see a king, and see that without having to be coerced or controlled, and Sigyn is one of the first.  __

 __They pass through the night with their fingers together, talking as if everything was as simple as they were when they were children. Loki avoids telling her about his misadventures on the Asgardian throne and his attempted conquering of Midgard, preferring instead to play simple tricks on her. When she tires of being made a fool of and tells him so, he decides to tell her of more involved tricks he played on others.

He also listens with rapt attention when she speaks of realms he’s never been to, things he’s never seen, and all the while when she speaks, she has that smile on the corner of her mouth, the same one she gave him as he was being led from court: hidden but present, visible but not.   

 _You inspire more questions than you answer, Sigyn Freyrsd_ _ó_ _ttir_ , he thinks, holding onto her as tightly as she holds onto him. 

When dawn comes and Linza returns, Sigyn is quick to drop his fingers and soothe Linza’s fears that Loki might have harmed her. But after Linza leaves, Sigyn turns around and gives him that same smile at the corner of her mouth before she bows again to him.

“By your leave, my prince,” she says, and it is only after she departs up the golden stair that he realizes he does not wish her to leave ever again.

 

**§**

  
Winter bites hard at the heels of Asgard this year, and though ice frosts over the bars and walls of Loki’s cell, the cold never gets to him. Sigyn leaves him stolen blankets alongside his food, and he feigns thanks to her, though the roughspun cloth is still folded neatly under his cot; sometimes he can catch her scent in them: a faint hint of lingonberries.

One evening she comes to his cell with a cold dinner and apologies. The meat is cold, as is the cider, and a large cube of ice floats in the goblet. She says that she hopes it’s good anyway, and that smile on the corner of her mouth torments him. But then she trips at a crack in the floor, and everything is sent spiralling into the air. She crashes against the bars, letting out a soft cry of pain as his dinner is sent across the floor of the cell. He makes an attempt to catch his goblet, at least, but his grip isn’t quick enough, and the cider spills onto him, ice and all.

When she gathers herself, she sees it before he can spin his glamour fast enough around his body. The ice from the cider slips quietly into his hand, absorbed within a single breath, and his true color leaks through to break the surface of his skin. He can feel one of his eyes convulsing too, and soon it is as red as blood, and there is nowhere for him to hide, not now, not that she has seen what she should have never known.

His hand is on her throat in an instant. She struggles to breathe in his grip, and when he turns her towards him he can see a bright red gash on her forehead where she’d hit the bars. Her hands try to pry his off her throat, but he only tightens his grip in return. Being the rightful queen of all the Nine Realms wouldn’t save her now. She has seen what no one should see, and he will let his secret die with her here, where no one can hear her scream.  _I shall be in this cell all my life for what I have done_ , he tells himself. 

_What is one more crime?_

_What is one more death?_

__“S- _stop_ ,” Sigyn manages to choke out, more of a breath than a word.

“I’m truly sorry that I cannot,” Loki says in an apologetic tone befitting a prince, even as the rest of his glamour starts to fall away and the ice begins to creep towards Sigyn’s neck. “I saw the terror in your eyes. I know you will tell if you live, and I cannot let that happen.” He purses his lips together, considering her face. 

_So beautiful…it truly is a waste._

“I-I’m not—” she manages to say before she lets out another desperate gasp for air.

“What?” For a moment, his grip loosens. He hesitates, and the glamour stays intact around his hand and her throat. She seizes her chance to speak.

“…I-I’m not afraid of you, Loki.”

He lets her go then, and she rolls away coughing, wrapping her arms around her stomach to steady herself. She stands up slowly, rubbing at the red marks on her neck.

“What did you say?” he asks in a demanding tone as his Asgardian glamour fixes itself around him again.

“I am not afraid of you,” she says in a ragged voice that proves she is speaking too soon. He lets her catch her breath, and after a long while, she asks: “You are from Jötunheimr, then?”

“I am Laufey’s son,” Loki says, and it feels a defeat to admit it, to let go of the identity that isn’t his, even for a moment. “And a Frost Giant. I am—not an Asgardian. Not an Odinson.” 

“…I see,” Sigyn says, narrowing her eyes at him as if she’s trying to remember. “So I should refer to you as  _Laufeyson_ , then?” She speaks as if she had not been in danger of dying nearly moments ago.

“…you do not fear me?” he asks again, still shocked by that confession. He had been  _traumatized_ to know what was underneath his skin, to know he was the monster that tore at children’s nightmares and parents’ hearts. How could a girl such as her look upon him and fear nothing?

“My prince,” Sigyn says evenly, not taking her eyes off him even as she gathers his spilled goblet and plate, “I am of Vanaheimr, where I have seen men rip themselves in twain knowing what has befallen the ones they have loved. I have seen dead children cry out for the parents that will not join them for many years. And I have  _Seen_ with eyes that are not mine, Seen things that are dread and terrible.”

She reaches out to touch his hand, but he shrinks back, and she does not persist. “You may be a Frost Giant and the rightful prince of Jötunheimr,” she admits evenly. “But I do not fear you.”

She curtsies and asks for his leave. He grants it, and she is up the golden stair faster than he can keep track of her. He does not see her again, not for the rest of the day, and he curls up in his cot, trying to fall into a hopefully dreamless sleep that does not involve his glamour being ripped from him or destroying his countrymen alongside his false friends, and especially not  _her_.   

 

**§**

  
But when he does close his eyes, he finds anything but rest. He is robbed of his magic in this waking nightmare, and his skin is blue and his eyes are red no matter what he tries to do. He decides that he will simply hide in his mind until morning comes, but then  _she_ finds him.

She is pale and bright in the light of the moon, finally rid of that cursed shift. He instinctively reaches out a hand to run over the swell of her breasts and the curve of her hips, but he flinches at the sight of his Frost-hand, all jagged and clawlike, hardly worth looking upon. She gives him a warm smile nonetheless, as if she does not understand what she sees.

He cries at her to leave, tells her that if she touches him, he’ll kill her. But she is deaf to his cries, and places both of her hands on his. But instead of the Frost covering her, her warmth covers him. His glamour returns to him piece by piece as she crouches naked over him, and eventually he is encompassed by her glow.

She does not say a word in response to his thanks but simply  _bites_ down on his lips as she kisses him. He struggles to throw her off, suddenly realizing this is a situation in which she has all the power and he has none, but she is determined and she overpowers him, tearing his robes to tattered shreds. 

She rides him wantonly after she rids him of his clothes, and though she has force him to keep his hands on her hips and she has to move up and down against his cock, he can’t hate it entirely. He cannot, for she looks on him as if he could never be a monster, looks on him with trust and something else he cannot place, even as she rides him to completion, even as she moans as if she was born for this. 

 _Sentiment_ , he tries to remind himself as he struggles for a control he cannot find, gasping at a sudden movement of her hips and the moan she lets out,  _I do not need the_ weakness  _of sentiment—_

 __The moment before he comes, his eyes burst open and he is back in his cell. His breath comes out in jagged pieces, and he realizes that if he is ever to leave this place, it cannot be without her. And if she does come, he will be certain to pin her down and have her learn her place beside him lest his nightmare become true.

 _Before I come for the Nine Realms, Sigyn Freyrsd_ _ó_ _ttir, I am coming for you._

 

**§**

  
Sigyn comes back in the dark of night to bring him his supper, and when she does, she curtsies politely, as if the red mark on her neck is not there, as if she did not almost die where she is standing now.

“Have you come to feed the monster?” he asks standoffishly, with acid in his voice.

“I have come to feed Loki Laufeyson, rightful prince of Jötunheimr,” she says airily in reply. She looks up at him with that thrice-damned smile as she adds: “And rightful King of all the Nine Realms.”

He stares at her. She  _has_ to be playing a joke on him. Underneath all that sourness and silence and sidesteps was this—this  _sentiment_? This _devotion_? And her betrothed—what was his name—? How can she look at him like this, knowing what is beneath, knowing what he has done?

He can only find a few words to say to her, stunned as he is by her sudden shift in allegiance. “You know as well as I that I do not have such a title.”

She walks lackadaisically towards the bars, and says one word: “ _Yet_.”

He scoffs, and turns his back to her as he hears her place his dinner on the ground.

“Do you doubt me, my king?”

He makes no response. Neither of them move, not for a long, long while.

“Shall I pledge myself to you?” she asks then, and he cannot find the words to refuse her even as she writes a line of symbols to make a hole in the bars large enough to let her pass through.

She kneels before him quickly, and before he can even turn around to face her properly, she is saying the words that she must have said to his father—to  _him_.

“I, Sigyn Freyrsdóttir,” she says softly, “do hereby pledge myself to your service, Loki Laufeyson.”

A shard of the broken goblet from the night before serves as her pledge knife, and she slices her palm open in front of him. She anoints her forehead with her own blood, and when his hand is pale again, she offers him her broken palm, and he tentatively takes some of her blood and spreads it across the inside of his own closed hand.

“I pledge to you my Sight, that you may have eyes in the past, present, and future, and grow all-knowing and all-seeing,” she says first, running a bloody finger between her eyes. She stands slowly to run her finger down parallel against the bridge of his nose, and her skin is velvet on his.

“I pledge to you my knife,” she continues, holding the goblet piece tightly in her bleeding hand,  “which I shall use to cut down your enemies and those who would not call you Loki King.” She places a line of blood on the opposite end of her hand, painting a twin line on his as he stands stiffly before her.

She has not said “ _and_.” She has one more promise for him, he realizes then. And when he sees her fingers slip beneath the ties of her shift, he does dare to hope, dare to dream that despite his shame and defeats, despite what he looks like underneath his skin, she may still look on him with bright eyes.

And she does as she lets the shift fall from her body, and she stands naked in all her splendor before him. His dream did not do her justice, he realizes now, even as she stains her body with her oath-blood.

“And I do pledge myself entirely to you and your endeavors,” she says softly, running her hands across the small of her waist and the curve of her hips, “and my body, my mind, my soul…and my heart.” 

As she marks the valley between her breasts, she looks at him with wide, feverish eyes. “For I have loved you all my life, and there would truly be no greater honor for me than to support you in your campaign to be King of all the Realms, known and unknown.” 

She bows to him then, not as a knight or a servant, but as a woman, on her knees with her head angled towards him, and he hears her say the sweetest words anyone has ever said to him: “ _Hail, Loki Laufeyson, Yggdrasil King._ ”

**§**  
  
She cannot even get up to end her pledge before he crashes his mouth down against hers.  
  
She has pledged him everything she is, and he will let her know exactly how much that will demand. He pulls tightly at the ribbon in her hair to let her braid spill free, and he tangles his hands in the dark tresses before pinning her up against the wall.  
  
Her body is warm and curved in his arms, and after some urging her mouth is open and eager for his tongue, and he adores it, adores the way he makes a trail of goosebumps follow his fingers on her skin. He will have her begging for that and more by the time he is finished with her.  
  
She breaks away and lets out a breathy little gasp against his neck. “I take it that my pledge is pleasing to my king?”  
  
He takes a hold of her hair and forces her head back against the cell wall, and she quivers in his grasp, her blood still bright in between her breasts. “Most pleasing, my dear,” he whispers quietly, and he can feel her spine shiver and her eyes widen as he kisses down her arched neck, along down the reddened skin where his hand had been only the night before. He presses his palm back against the mark, and her eyes flutter shut as she lets out a gasp.  
  
And he loves that, the way she shivers and nearly swoons in his arms, begging to be conquered, pale and bloody and dark all at once, a world unto herself that he is claiming for his own. He focuses then on her breasts, bright in the light of the moon, and takes them into his hands. Sigyn shudders slightly and her legs wrap tightly around him in response, and he can feel her warmth against him. And he delights in how responsive she is even now at the slightest of touches, the smallest of suggestions. She’ll be such fun to play with if she keeps this up.   
  
Her breath catches in her throat when he takes one of her pink nipples into his mouth, pinching at the other with a closer hand. Her blood, smeared on her chest, rubs against his knuckles as he sucks at her, and seeing the red against his skin makes him bite down, _hard_. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see her bite her lower lip, trying to swallow a moan.   
  
He stops his ministrations at her breasts almost instantly, and tangles a hand in her hair to force her to look up at him. His shadow completely swallows hers, and he is sure she sees nothing but him, that he is all her world. Her mouth is a puckered circle framed by his fingers; his lips form a humorless line that lets her know she had best pay heed to his words.  
  
“I want to _hear_ you, Sigyn,” he says, all demands and shadows, and when he smiles at her, he looks feral, as he did when he was trapped in the cage on Midgard; the one that was built for another monster. He tightens his grip on her face despite a small sound of pain from her. “I want to hear you moan as I take you, and you will surrender yourself to me. You have pledged yourself to me, and you are _mine_ now, and you will be mine and mine _alone_ until the day you die. And until that day comes, you will do as I command-- _without_ question.”  
  
His smile stretches wider, his teeth an impossible white as she twists her face, pursing her lips in front of him. He brings her face closer to his, their lips only a breath apart.   
  
“Do you understand?” he asks, and it comes out as barely a whisper, a sound that roots itself in her ears and causes her skin to prickle in response.  
  
Sigyn stares at him with wide eyes and when he lets go of her face, she whispers a quiet, shy _yes_ that lets him know she will not fight him no matter what he demands, no matter what he forces upon her. And after she has swallowed what little pride she must have left, he forces her down to her knees and brings her mouth down upon his cock.  
  
And her mouth, sweet as it was against his, is even sweeter now. It is small, but so wet, and though she cannot take all of him within her mouth, what she can do proves more than good enough. She runs her tongue down the underside of his cock even as he thrusts in and out of her mouth, and looks up at him with silent eyes that are eager to please, eyes that tell him she knows and understands her rightful place.   
  
After some time, when she has become accustomed to his cock in her mouth, he tangles a hand in her hair and holds her in place as he thrusts in and out of her. Though she tries to stay still, it is a struggle for her to wrap her lips around him, and eventually she must break away all too soon in a desperate attempt to breathe.  
  
“I did _not_ tell you to stop,” he snaps at her, and before she can even finish taking another breath, her mouth is full of his cock again, his hands tangled in her dark hair. With no regard to her threshold, he continues to thrust in and out of her violently, a precursor for what is to come.  
  
He pulls her away when he feels that he is ready, and though she is sputtering for air beneath him, he notices that his cock is slick enough to slip inside her at any angle he would want. But which should he choose first?   
  
He decides will not take her as a loving husband takes his wife, with arms wrapped around her and soothing promises of sentimental love in her ear, not when she belongs to him and has given up her wishes in lieu of his. Instead he lies down on his cot, and when Sigyn looks up at him with a flushed face and mussed-up hair and swollen lips, he curls one long finger towards himself.    
  
“Come.”  
  
And she does, hips swaying as she walks, her hair sticking to the sweat on her breasts, and her scent tormenting him, driving him mad. He takes ahold of her hips and makes to lower her down on his cock; he has decided he wants to see her ride him, as she had in his dream, but this time he will ensure that she will do so entirely under his control.  
  
He feels resistance at first as he teases at her outer lips, but he places a hand between her legs to make ample room for him before he sets himself at her center. He encounters some resistance as he tries to lower her hips further, and Sigyn’s eyes fill with pain for a brief moment until he thrusts deep into her.  
  
She’s so _tight_ , he realizes then, and she lets out a scream that lets him know then that she was a maiden after all. Even if he had been deaf, there is blood dripping down his cock and tears running down her face. She stares at him and looks nearly broken, and for a second he thinks of a raven with a tattered wing, but he only smiles sweetly at her, and using his grip on her curved hips, brings her up and down on his cock.  
  
Her cries are of pain at first, and she whispers pleadingly, her words barely audible. “My king,” she whispers quietly, her eyes bound tightly shut, her breasts moving with each thrust into her, “I-- _oh_ \--m-my king-- _please_ \--”  
  
He thrusts exceptionally deep into her then, and she lets out a cry that has the sound of pleasure in it, the sound of surrender, the sound of submission. He grasps her arms and holds her in place as he moves even deeper inside of her.  
  
“I _will _ have you as I see fit,” he tells her in a low growl, and she purses her lips tightly in response and nods her consent. He thrusts upwards into her even as he brings her hips downward against his cock, and she shakes and cries out as he does, and soon she is doing everything all on her own, riding him like a beautiful whore, like a trained pet, and soon, he can feel her getting even tighter.  
  
He hears his name broken to pieces inside her mouth as she reaches her climax, and even as she moans helplessly above him, she is even wetter now, practically fallen to pieces herself in his arms. The sensation of her against him, wet and eager and devoted, brings him close to the edge as well, and when she starts resuming the motions he’d once guided her in, he knows he has trained her well, that she will be worth this and more in the war to come.     
  
He spills himself inside her then, holding her hips in place as he rides out his orgasm, and she gasps as she feels him come inside her, and she even has the courtesy to move her hips slightly over him as he reaches his end. He falls to the cot to catch his breath, and when she dismounts and walks over to him, he can see her marked with his seed, the pale skin of her inner thighs stained with the promise of sons.   
  
“My king,” she whispers, nothing but devotion and charity, and she purrs with contentment that lets him know she is truly his, that she will never seek anything from any man but him for as long as she may live. He runs a hand through her hair, and as if compelled by a siren-song, she lowers herself to kiss him.  
  
“I think,” she says with a smile as she pulls away, “that I shall _never_ find a man such as you in all the universe.”  
  
He smiles at her, running one finger down the curve of her waist and the swell of her hips, and she lets out a little gasp of pleasure as he does.   
  
“No, Sigyn,” he says softly, fixing her in his gaze. “I don’t suppose you _ever_ shall.”  
  
§    


End file.
